With Good Reason

Summer is here and with it comes our annual With Good Reason summer reading list. From the hills and hollers of Appalachia to Egypt, we’ve got so much to keep your pages turning. Jessica Mullens Fullen, Vic Sizemore, Sarah Rifky and Maynard Scales share some of their favorite reads.

Virginia made headlines when it became the latest state to abolish the death penalty. Sabrina Butler-Smith is the first woman to be exonerated from death row. She says she’s living, breathing proof of why the capital punishment should be a thing of the past. Also: Deirdre Enright is probably best known for her work as the founding director of the Innocence Project and her passionate voice on the first season of the hit podcast, Serial. But before all that, she spent decades as a capital defense lawyer. She says she attended one of her clients’ executions and it changed her life forever.

Later in the show: Since 1976, 17 women have been executed in the United States. Mary Atwell says women facing the death penalty are often subjected to harsher sentencing due to gender bias within the criminal justice system. Plus: In 1951, seven Black men from Martinsville, Virginia were executed for allegedly raping a white woman. Two months ago, Virginia governor Ralph Northam issued pardons to each of the Martinsville 7. Peter Wallenstein says the Martinsville 7 case brings into sharp focus the racial disparities of capital punishment in Virginia.

As a Black literary scholar, Shermaine Jones was unsure of how to live and work through the Covid-19 pandemic and the George Floyd uprisings. She wondered, is it appropriate to study fiction and poetry during times of crisis? And how could she give her students grace and compassion in their own work? She turns to Black women writers to answer these complicated and enduring questions. And: Desegregation changed things on paper. But people continue to live how they were taught to live, and how history has taught them to live. As a Richmond native, Marvin Chiles understands this well. His new book The Struggle for Change: Race and the Politics of Reconciliation in Modern Richmond explores the slow and ever evolving desegregation of Virginia’s capital city.

Later in the show: The 2017 Summer of Hate in Charlottesville became a worldwide media event. Images and videos from that day were shared millions and millions of times and continue to be used in pop culture. Aniko Bodroghkozy’s new book, Making #Charlottesville: Media from Civil Rights to Unite the Right looks at how the far right borrowed media strategies from the Civil Rights movement and how the images that each created continue to shape politics.

Jalane Schmidt recently brought a group of Virginia teachers to see Charlottesville’s tiny monument to its enslaved residents. One teacher had a startling personal revelation at that site. And: Elgin Cleckley is an architect who studies empathy. He says redesigning public space can help heal racial wounds. Plus: Danville, Virginia was once a Confederate capital. Now, teams of citizens are working together to tell the story of a different Danville: a city that hosted Martin Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall, a city where brave teenagers forced the public library to integrate, and where opportunity for all is on the rise. Karice Luck-Brimmer recently took students and teachers from Averett University on an eye-opening tour of African American Danville.

Later in the show: When we hear about the end of Jim Crow, we hear mostly about kids attending schools or about major court cases. But what did the process of legal desegregation look like in everyday life and culture? Jennifer Ritterhouse shares the story of Sarah Patton “Pattie” Boyle and her transformation from segregationist to ardent desegregationist in mid-20th century Virginia. Plus: Jody Allen discusses how Black Virginians collectively built their own institutions during the Jim Crow era. And: Camilla Williams was an African American opera singer from Danville, Virginia. She shares her memories and music with us, and Ethel Haughton explains why Williams’ legacy is so important today.

Connective labor is disappearing. Professions that rely on connecting humans -- like teaching or therapists -- are being automated. Allison Pugh says that this is dangerous not only for people’s pockets, but for their overall wellbeing. And: A million poor men migrate to the Gulf for unskilled jobs every year. Andrea Wright says that the Indian government sees this as an opportunity, but also a mark against India in the international imagination.

Later in the show: In 1914, coal miners in Ludlow, Colorado went on strike to protest better working conditions. Fawn-Amber Montoya details how they were terrorized and massacred in response.

Political prisons in the Arab world are rooted in colonialism. Diana Obeid says these prisons are meant to instill fear and destroy the soul. And: In 2022, Mahsa Amini died after she was arrested by the Iranian morality police for not wearing her head scarf properly. Her death sent convulsions throughout Iran, as intense protests threatened to topple the authoritarian government. Peyman Jafari calls the protests a revolt with a revolutionary perspective.

Later in the show: The Yemen civil war started back in 2014. Since then, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the US have all gotten involved - triggering a long and protracted proxy war. Bernie Kaussler says the situation in Yemen is a major humanitarian disaster. Plus: Earlier this year, China brokered a truce between Saudi Arabia and Iran, two of the biggest rivals in the Middle East. Ariel Ahram says China’s emergence in the region might actually be a good thing for the US.

Growing up in Southwest Virginia, Tyler Hughes has been steeped in the traditions of mountain music and dance from a young age. For him, music is about community. And: Life skills classes for people with exceptional needs often teach things like cooking, money skills, and street safety. Karen Feathers and Jackie Secoy believe that appreciating, listening to, discussing, and even playing music are important life skills, too.

Later in the show: Imagine you’re looking at a piece of art like a painting or a sculpture. You can probably describe it in some basic ways using math–it’s 30 inches long, it’s twice as tall as it is deep, that sort of thing. Robert Wells says we can do the same thing with music. Plus: 60 years later, The Beatles still capture our attention–and new audiences, too! Thomas Payne is helping a new generation fall in love with John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

In the late 70s, the University of Virginia inherited 10,000 glass plate negatives from the Holsinger Studio. Among them were 600 portraits self-commissioned by Black Virginians. John Edwin Mason sat with those images for years, dreaming up the perfect team to bring them to life. He found his team. Now, through the Visions of Style and Progress exhibition, Mason says that the images are transforming the way that viewers think about life for Black Virginians at the turn of the 20th century.

And: Light can be tricky to work with in installations. How Holly Robertson used the 9-foot-windows at the university’s Small Collections Library to bring Visions of Style and Progress to life. Plus: It’s difficult to imagine that the highway was someone’s home. But it was. LaToya S. Gray says a once thriving Richmond neighborhood known as the Harlem of the South fell victim to intentionally destructive city planners.

We often think of cemeteries as separate worlds unto themselves. But people buried at Confederate graveyards were surely connected to people at the African burial grounds, and the cemeteries reveal the intimacy of their connections. Ryan Smith and his students have been transformed by tending to cemeteries over the past 20 years. And: After Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy needed land for bases and training. Former William & Mary PHd student Travis Harris says the African American neighborhood of Magruder near Yorktown, Virginia was just one of the many mostly black communities forced out to make way for U.S. military bases.

Later in the show: Award-winning journalist Brian Palmer grew up hearing about Magruder, his father’s boyhood neighborhood that was bulldozed to make way for a US Naval base. An old picture led Brian and his wife Erin Palmer back to Magruder and across the state tracking where his ancestor was enslaved. After moving to Richmond, the couple got involved in restoring a cemetery where Brian has more ancestors.

At markets in the ancient world, silver-tongued magicians hawked their wares of amulets, cursed tablets and even spells. But Shaily Patel says early Christians developed the concept of divine miracle to distinguish themselves from magic. And: From 1968 to 2001, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood defined generations of childhoods. John Thompson says many of the life lessons Fred Rogers shared on the show embody principles of an ancient Chinese tradition known as daoism.

Later in the show: Does God exist? We’ve all grappled with the question. In his latest book - Is There a God? A Debate - Kenny Pearce debates his colleague and avowed atheist, Graham Oppy, on the existence of God and the merits of believing in a higher being. Plus: Buddhism is widely-known as a peaceful tradition deeply committed to non-violence. But Christie Kilby says Buddhism actually has a lot to teach about warfare. She consults for the International Committee of the Red Cross, exploring connections between Buddhism and the laws of war.